Lucifer S02E09 “Homewrecker” REVIEW

Available in the UK via Amazon TV, new episodes every TuesdayWriter: Mike CostaDirector: Greg Beeman

Essential Plot Points:

The landowner of the block where Lux stands is found murdered.

When his son and heir immediately starts evicting everyone on the block – including Lucifer from Lux – before his father’s body is even cold, Lucifer suspects the son, Eric, of murdering dad, Dean.

Lucifer tries to make a new deal with Eric (because his old deal with Dean was written in lipstick on a stripper’s thong and so is hardly legally binding) but Eric is having none of it. He plans to sell the whole block to one of his dad’s rivals who plans to level the area and turn it into a mall.

Maze, meanwhile, suspects that Mrs God has a hand in all this, believing it to be an attempt to force Lucifer to return with mum and Amenadiel to the Silver City.

Mrs God (though we should stop calling her that as she prefers not to be defined by her ex-husband) actually had nothing to do with the murder but she sees how the situation can be used to her advantage.

Lucifer organises a sit-in (well a dance in, really) at Lux.

Chloe turns up with the cops to turf him out, but instead joins him in the sit-in. They dance the night away together.

Mum Almighty (is that better? We refuse to call her Charlotte) tracks down a gangland bomb supplier and asks him to blow up Lux.

He’s game, but with the nightclub full of people he refuses to do it.

Instead, after an unconscious tip-off from Dr Linda (who’s also at the sit-in) Mum Almighty notes how her son and Chloe are getting along; she realises that’s it not a “where?” that Lucifer is attached to but a “who?” – even if he doesn’t realise it himself.

Mum Almighty secretly dates Dan (though Maze and Amenadiel are secretly trailing her). She surreptitiously gets him to confirm her suspicions about Chloe. She then sleeps with him because… well, why not?

Mum Almighty changes her plans.

Anyway, back at the crime plot, turns out Dean wanted to marry a poor girl, Christi, and his dad didn’t approve, believing her to be a golddigger. After hiring a dodgy PI to entrap her, and failing spectacularly to do so (she really did love Eric… awwwww) Dean instead turned to blackmail. The kids found out and… well, one of them killed Dean, but both confess to it, knowing they could both end up in jail. Lucifer is impressed by their devotion to each other.

(Oh, and Eric isn’t really a heartless businessman; he was forced into selling the properties because his dad had squandered the business.)

Chloe has a friend at City Council make Lux a heritage site owing to its history (Ava Gardner, Frank Sinatra and Howard Hughes used to drink at the place); it cannot be demolished.

Clearly touched by Chloe’s favour, Lucifer invites Chloe out for a meal.

But in the meantime he goes for a session with Dr Linda who makes him realise that he’s not in love with LA, he’s in love with Chloe…

He totally handles this revelation badly and leaves Chloe waiting alone at the restaurant.

Fed up waiting (or even waiting for him to answer her texts) she leaves the restaurant and goes to her car…

…which has a bomb attached to it. And Mum Almighty is around the corner with the remote trigger.

Review:

For most of its running time, this is a solid four-star episode, until the last few minutes elevate things up a level. To be honest, until recently we’ve never bought into the whole will-they?/won’t-they vibe as Chloe and Lucifer seemed so ill-matched that any romance between them would have come across like an artificial relationship forced on them by the writers. And yet, in the space of a few episodes the idea of the two of them actually becoming an item has become considerably less outlandish. And that’s crucial, because without that the cliffhanger here would have been only a tiny percentage as powerful.

As it is, we get a double emotional whammy; not only does Lucifer stand Chloe up just as it looks like they might actually get together, but Mum Almighty, having deduced the same thing, is skulking about in dark corners ready to blow Chloe sky high.

She hasn’t really thought this one through, has she? As bad plans go, that rates up there with, “Let’s have a rave in minefield!” But hey, by her own admission, she doesn’t get humans, and Lucifer is more human now than angel. If she thinks blowing up the woman he cares most about on the planet will have him scurrying back home, she’s in a for a shock (even if she doesn’t succeed, which is likely).

Bottom line is: Chloe and Lucifer have never come across so close and so easy in each other’s company as they do here, and the scene in which Chloe reveals to him that she’s save Lux is genuinely moving. Of course, the signs that Lucifer has unconsciously been in love with Chloe have been there since the very start of the series; it seemed to be inherent in the fact that his “charm” didn’t work on her and that his supernatural defences didn’t work when she was around. Lucifer thought that this is what made her interesting and intriguing to him; it never occurred to him that his interest and intrigue in her might actually be causing these things to happen. It’s the age-old fairytale, in a way: for a supernatural being to fall in love with a human, they must become human themselves.

And hey, the scene with them dancing to The Clash all kinds of wonderful.

Elsewhere, there’s a lot of fun to be had in “Homewrecker” and not just guffawing at how daft Eric looks in his full body cast, waking from a major trauma just to deliver an infodump. Amenadiel and Maze serve up some prime “supporting characters have comedy subplot” moments; Mum Almighty is finally showing her true colours (and looking like she’s auditioning for a villainous role in Once Upon A Time while she’s at it); and Doctor Linda manages to be awesome (as usual) but also awesomely bad at timing. The way she makes Lucifer face up to the truth is great; how was she to know he’d go into commitment meltdown because of it?

The Good:

When Maze says, “I did not see that coming,” she pretty much reflects what all the audience is thinking about Dan dating Mum Almighty. That’s what we call a twist.

The cliffhanging was tense as you like, especially after that heartbreaking moment when Lucifer stands Chloe up at the restaurant.

The Lucifer/Chloe dance is just so sweet, as is the moment when Lucifer realises that Chloe has saved his nightclub.

The crime of the week (the usual piffle though it might be) and the arc plot dovetail really smoothly.

Great choice of music for Lucifer and Chloe’s dance: The Clash’s “Should I Stay Or Should I Go”. Not just because it’s a brilliant song but because it reflects the theme of the whole episode. Though considering what’s just happened in the plot at this point, another Clash song would have been just as apt: “I Fought The Law (And The Law Won”).

He may not have had much to do this week, but Amenadiel provided the episode with two of its most amusing expressions. This…

…and this…

…which was wickedly and perfectly captured by a delighted Maze…

Sadly the photo hasn’t been posted on the Lucifer Twitter feed or Instagram yet…

Lucifer as a tour guide was hilarious: “This follicly challenged man, that’s Sleepy Pete. Hello Pete. Give us a wave. Everyone wave at Pete. He will sell you the best Molly in the city. Don’t buy his cocaine, though. It’s got enough baking soda in it to make a cake. It’s not a bad idea as I think about it.”

When Lucifer promises that, “the man’s feet will remain firmly on the ground,” and then Eric’s body immediately slams into the roof of a car, it’s a great WTF? moment.

The Bad:

“You don’t hide money like that unless you don’t want anyone to find it,” says Bloom, handily defining the word “hide” for those of us who didn’t know.

In fact, while the script was largely pretty sharp this week, there were a couple of clunky lines like that one that stood out rather awkwardly. Another was Amenadiel’s, “They must be discussing some evil terrible plans and we must stop them.” Was he actually trying to sound like something from ’60s Batman?

We never get a clear look at whatever it was Lucifer is doodling on Eric’s cast. Considering his usual level of childish wit we’d assume a cock and balls, but it doesn’t actually look like that. Maybe whatever it was was deemed just too rude to put on screen, but we’d like to have seen the full work of art. Blu-ray extra, maybe?

And The Random:

In a packed playlist this week we heard:
• “Great Night (feat. Shovels & Rope)” by NEEDTOBREATHE – Opening bus tour scene
• “Told You I’d Be with the Guys” by Cherry Glazerr – Chloe and Lucifer meet at the Cooper building to question Eric
• “Obscura” by Methyl Ethel – Lucifer and Chloe leave Eric to find Eleanor and Charlotte confronts Kevin Burnick in a toilet
• “Not Tonight” by Snow Tha Product – Charlotte arrives at Lux to find the sit-in going on.
• “Choke” by The Black Cadillacs – Chloe and the cops arrive at Lux
• “Should I Stay or Should I Go” by The Clash – Chloe and Lucifer dance at Lax
• “Swim” by Sophie and the Bom Boms – Lucifer and Chloe stop Simon from seducing a woman by a swimming pool
• “Monsters” by Chaos Chaos – Mum Almighty flirts with Dan
• “Devil Devil” by MILCK – Lucifer stands up Chloe.

This weeks episode has a great comedy cast…

… Comedy cast? Geddit? Oh, never mind…

We had to Google “ta’ vonlu’” to discover if Ella’s geek credentials were still unchallenged, and found one Klingon forum that discussed chess terms in Klingon back in 2011. And yes, they concluded that “ta’ vonlu’” (literal translation “the emperor is trapped”) is pretty much the Klingon term for checkmate. So, Ella… that’s really brilliantly nerdy. Hats off to you.